Canadian, U.S. leaders gather for Pacific North-West economic summit

B.C. parliamentary secretaries John Les, Richard T. Lee and Rob Howard are in Saskatoon this week for the 22nd Annual Summit of the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region (PNWER), promoting the development of markets for B.C.’s clean energy and hoping to improve the flow of people, goods and services across the Canada-U.S. border.

“The power of partnerships” is the theme for this year’s summit, which will see more than 600 government and business leaders from PNWER’s 10 states, provinces and territories address the region’s major policy issues.

Founded in 1991, PNWER is the only statutory, non-partisan, bi-national, public-private partnership in North America.

It is a forum for collaborative bi-national planning involving both the public and private sectors and offers leadership at the state and provincial level.

Lee, parliamentary secretary for Asia-Pacific, said, “Access to the growing Asia-Pacific market is of shared importance to provinces, territories and states in our region. Collectively, PNWER has significant resources that are in demand from Asia. To take advantage of that opportunity, B.C., Canada and our private sector partners are responding by investing in infrastructure.”

PNWER members are Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Alaska, Alberta, B.C., Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan and the Yukon.

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